LACKAWANNA COUNTY, Pa. — One nursing home in Lackawanna County has had National Guard members come in to help sanitize the place.
Col. Frank Montgomery of the Pennsylvania National Guard answered questions on Monday during Governor Wolf's coronavirus news conference about the role the Guard is now playing in the pandemic.
Long-term care facilities and nursing homes account for many of the cases and most of the deaths in our area.
National Guard members are available to those facilities to help acquire personal protective equipment and for additional manpower in places where staffing has been affected by the virus.
"We provided services, assessment services, at up to 13 facilities and provided staffing assistance at 10. Some have been reported in the media. I can indicate the counties that we've been in but not wanting to name each individual site. Beaver, Delaware, Lackawanna, Dauphin, Franklin Chester, Pike, and Northampton Counties, those are the counties where the facilities reside where we either currently are or have been."
We now know that one of the nursing homes in our area receiving help is Mountain View Care and Rehab Center in Scranton. Mountain View is one of the hardest-hit facilities in Lackawanna County with 15 COVID-19 deaths as of last week.
Administrators didn't go into specifics about how many National Guard members have been called in or for how long, but the owner said in a statement:
"Mountain View requested support from the Pennsylvania National Guard. The Guard is providing assistance with personal protective equipment, additional sanitizing resources, and resident-care support. We welcome their additional resources during this national emergency, which is allowing us to more effectively treat impacted residents."
We don't know if any other facilities in Lackawanna County have received or plan to receive help from the National Guard.
Col. Montgomery wouldn't name individual facilities.